Friday, April 5, 2013

Barack Obama demanded a "national conversation" about gun control. What he didn't demand was an "honest" conversation about gun control. The reason he left off the word "honest" is because he has proven again and again to use lies to promote his irrational hatred for those who would be self reliant and not depend on the largess of government for protection.

Lets start with the Fast and Furious lie that 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico were from US gun dealers. In sworn testimony before congress, Bill McMahon, deputy assistant director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, swore that only eight percent of the arms recovered in Mexico were from licensed gun dealers, noting: Of the 100,000 weapons recovered by Mexican authorities, only 18,000 were determined to have been manufactured, sold, or imported from the United States, and of those 18,000, just 7,900 came from sales by licensed gun dealers. Considering 2500 were known to have been smuggled into Mexico by the Obama administration as part of Fast and Furious it's clear the 90% number was a known lie propagated by Obama and company.

Now the more recent 40% lie. Obama claimed that 40 percent of the gun purchases in the nation are conducted without a background check. It is another outright knowing lie. The Statistics he used were not only 20 years out of date but included all transfers not purchases. The survey he used was started before the Brady Bill became law and background checks were required. Even the generally supportive of Obama, Washington Post had to report on this lie, giving Obama three Pinocchio's .

There are two key problems with the president's use of this statistic: The numbers are about two decades old, yet he acts as if they are fresh, and he refers to "purchases" or "sales" when in fact the original report concerned "gun acquisitions" and "transactions." Those are much broader categories of data.

As we noted before, the White House said the figure comes from a 1997 Institute of Justice report, written by Philip Cook of Duke University and Jens Ludwig of the University of Chicago.

This study was based on data collected from a survey in 1994, the same year that the Brady Act requirements for background checks came into effect. In fact, the questions concerned purchases in 1993 and 1994, and the Brady Act went into effect in early 1994 - meaning that some, if not many, of the guns were bought in a pre-Brady environment.

Digging deeper, we found that the survey sample was just 251 people. (The survey was done by telephone, using a random-digit-dial method, with a response rate of 50 percent.) With this sample size, the 95 percent confidence interval will be plus or minus six percentage points.

. . . .

The Police Foundation report did not break out gun purchases, so in January we asked Ludwig to rerun the data, just looking at guns purchased in the secondary market. The result, depending on the definition, was 14 percent to 22 percent. That's at least half the percentage repeatedly cited by Obama. (In a recent article for National Review, Cook and Ludwig wrote "we don't know the current percentage - nor does anyone else." But they say if the percentage is lower it actually strengthens the case for expanding background checks because it would be less expensive to implement.) Since our initial report on this statistic appeared, The Washington Post in February included a question on background checks on a survey of Maryland residents, asking whether they went through a background check during a gun purchase in the past 10 years. The result? Twenty-one percent say they did not.

Coincidentally or not, 21 percent falls within the 14-to-22 percent range for gun purchases without background checks in the 1994 survey.

So Obama wants a national conversation, but his actions clearly dictate he wants the conversation not to be based on logic, reason, and practical solutions. His actions clearly demonstrate he wants the conversation to be one sided, based on lies and emotional rhetoric to the exclusion of truth and substantial debate.

When the President has deliberately chosen to distort facts, and lie to the people to promote and instill further restrictions on fundamental rights he has in fact destroyed the ability of "moderates" to effect any meaningful discussion much less change. The clear exposure even by liberal supportive media, of the lies and distortions by the government make any honest debate impossible. Obama's brief 5 years in office is so filled with clearly demonstrated lies and deceptions that no rational person could reasonably consider the arguments he or his representatives present on any topic as truthful or trustworthy. Not just on Gun Control but on oil, healthcare, immigration, spending, in fact virtually every major issue, the default position of the Obama and his Whitehouse is to lie, and distort the facts. The reason compromise is so difficult with Obama, is because he and the entire Democrat party have proven that they are not trustworthy.

Having been caught in multiple lies, especially concerning gun control, how can anybody reasonably work with the Democrats in an honest conversation?

"Criminalizing choices that adults make because we think they are unwise ones, when the choices involved have no negative effect on the rights of others, is not appropriate in a free society."– Barney Frank (2009)"The true danger is when Liberty is nibbled away, for expedients."– Edmund Burke (1899)"The core divide in American politics now is not between liberals and conservatives, or between capitalists and socialists. It is between libertarians and communitarians."- E.J. Dionne, The Washington Post, May 19, 2003

"Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen...."-President Dwight Eisenhower

“Where the government fears the people, there is Liberty. Where the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”- Benjamin Franklin "The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight." Obviously Teddy didn’t have much of a “victim” mentality.- Teddy Roosevelt (1902)